WRONG Side of History

 

OPINION:  Alan Simpson  Nov 9, 2024

Halito! Chim Achukma? (Hello, how are you?)

It’s Native American Heritage Month again. I would like to discuss something that’s been endeared to me for some time.  I seek transparency, and I do not desire to be offensive in any way, but I’m on deck, and it’s my turn to bat.

This concerns school curriculums and at least offering ‘Native American’ studies as an elective.

We seldom hear anything about Native American history, and after all, we are Oklahoma and home to 69 tribes who were displaced here in the 1800s. The Oklahoma History course in school only skims the surface of Native studies, and, after all, with its indigenous history, no other state compares to Oklahoma.

There’s been a sudden urgency to actualize how Native American history should be taught in our schools.  For a start, why not tell the truth instead of withholding, editing, and sanitizing it? In layman‘s terms, “tell it like it is.”.

We’re talking transparency here.  It’s necessary to open ‘Pandora’s box’ and discuss land theft (I call it ‘land grab’), government corruption, hundreds of broken treaties, rape, human trafficking, taking children from parents and sending them far away, and even scalping men, women, and children and collecting ‘bounties’ for scalps.

The prestigious yet dishonest Texas Rangers even murdered Mexican people scalped them, and sold scalps as being Indians.  Rangers called it glory, and they answered to nobody.

For many years, our history books have failed miserably regarding Indigenous history.  Three years ago, Kim and I were in West Point, New York, and I finally found an 8’ x 8’ section in the museum basement devoted to ‘Indian Wars,’ which referenced it as ‘Indian Uprising.’ I might also add that Native people should never be referred to as ‘renegades’ when referencing people who were fighting for their land, families, and the honor of being the true and quintessential Americans. Unfortunately, they have been... on the wrong side of history.

Such was the case when Indigenous people fought on what I call the ‘wrong side of history.’

Almost Dead Indians: Atrocity (excerpt)

BOOK Excerpt:

CHAPTER ONE

Dead Indians

Ok, we are going to start here with some dots. You and I will connect them.

In one year, 1851, the United States paid out more than $1 million in bounties for Indian scalps.  (We’d be really dead Indians then.)  Pequot scalps?  The bounty was $100 in colonial times. $100 is like a million dollars today, right?

Figure 4 1863 https://nativenewsonline.net/opinion/america-s-real-longest-war-was-the-conflict-against-indigenous-americans

“…We must not shy away from the past and the things that have hurt us. We must not bury our truths. We must embrace and remember who we are and who the Great Creator intended us to be.  Indian people have carried a heavy burden and responsibility.  It is only with the preservation of our cultural identity and language will we find our way back to the people we were meant be.  It is for these reasons, preserving our culture and helping our ancestral memories to live is so very important.  Especially at this time.  For if not now, then when will we wake up and regain our freedoms, inside ourselves?  Our heritage and culture are what makes us Indian people.  We have a responsibility to our youth and to the future generations to show them who they are.  Children will always be representative of our own actions.”—Moses Brings Plenty (Oglala Lakota) He’s a musician in the band Brule (Paul LaRoche is an adoptee).  Moses is an enrolled tribal member from the Pine Ridge Oyate (Reservation).  He’s known for his recurring role on Sheridan’s Yellowstone, as well as the role of Ottawa Jones in Showtime’s The Good Lord Bird.  He has also has portrayed “Crazy Horse,” “Sitting Bull,” and many other historical Indian warriors. He also serves as American Indian consultant/producer on many of Sheridan’s productions, where he ensures the authenticity of all American Indian storylines, set design, hair and make-up, and costumes.  

 

Figure 5 CLIPPING, Minnesota, 24 October 1897 https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=LAH18971024.2.212 $100 paid for one scalp in that county and $200 for another… “Suppressing Indians War?”  Over SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS for SCALPS?  ($7,870.06 in 1897, today’s dollar value = $260,110.00)

 Yes, for 500+ years it’s been an ongoing crime against humanity, genocide, collecting scalps, bounties for dead Indians, slavery, then murder the truth and collect our bones. 

Here is one more example:  

It was so simple (too simple) to use “disease” for massive die-offs of Indian people (for their lack of immunity to germs) (yeah, right), instead of calling it what it was:   germ warfare and murder.  Just look at Lord Jeffery Amherst.  (Right now I know scholars investigating—many imported British poisons produced massive deaths when victim’s bodies looked like small pox that had killed them… clever, right?)  Among the damning evidence are letters written in 1763 between officers of the British military detailing plans to send a plague among the “vermin” to eradicate them.   READ: https://medium.com/@alhakofi/yes-white-americans-purposefully-infected-native-americans-with-smallpox-ed5b913a235b

JAMES KIRKER: SERIAL KILLER SCALP HUNTER? July 6 1846 Massacre

Reckoning 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_massacres_in_North_America

(Kirker KILLED and SCALPED 130 men, women and children.)

They perfected their guns and poison on our bodies.  They made war on us.  They wiped out entire villages.  Giving diseased blankets to expose First Nations people to smallpox is pretty well-known; it created a decisive advantage in war and conquest against Indigenous People everywhere.  The weaponization of “pathogens” like small pox and “poisons” in tainted alcohol (like wine) (early bio-weapons) have been a coveted area of military machinery for a very long time….a very very long time.

MORE SOON 

(request a free pdf of this entire book: tracelara@pm.me)